Chapter 333 - 165: New Departments

Chapter 333: Chapter 165: New Departments

This is because patent protection covers not only the drug itself but also its derivatives, dosage forms, and routes of administration.

It is very difficult for other companies to bypass these patent walls to conduct their own R&D and production.

"I know new drug development is extremely difficult, and it’s hard for generic drugs to get around the original manufacturer’s patents," Jiang Miao continued with a smile. "But we can create subtype new drugs."

"Subtype new drugs?" Dr. Chen understood Jiang Miao’s point, but he felt compelled to add a word of caution. "General Manager Jiang, while subtype new drugs can bypass other companies’ patents, many pharmaceutical firms, when building their patent walls, also tend to register all sorts of subtype molecules at the same time. That means we’d need a completely new subtype molecule. The difficulty of that is comparable to developing a brand-new drug, and besides, there’s no guarantee a new subtype molecule can even be used as a medicine."

Jiang Miao wasn’t too concerned about this. As far as he was concerned, he just needed to know the new molecule. From there, he could launch large-scale cell and animal experiments to select the optimal dosage form with high efficacy and low side effects.

He shook his head with a smile. "It doesn’t matter. We’ll use the -tinib class as our model. The next task for the Third Pharmaceutical R&D Office is to use various synthesis methods to try and create a brand-new -tinib class subtype molecule."

Faced with their boss’s stubborn insistence, Dr. Chen and the other two researchers chose to obey the order, despite their reservations.

’If they ended up losing money, it would be Jiang Miao’s problem anyway.’

Dr. Huang adjusted his glasses and replied, "No problem. We can give it a try."

After giving out the assignment, Jiang Miao adjourned the meeting.

Yu Jiancun returned to Yangcheng to oversee the management of Xinkangle Medicine.

He Youwei, however, did not go with him. Her title of Chief Technology Officer was purely nominal, so she remained at the Nanhu Experimental Zone to continue her research on a highly effective treatment for lupus. Her project was assigned to the Second Pharmaceutical R&D Office of the Technology Division.

As for the First Pharmaceutical R&D Office, it was currently managed by Shuya. The lead researcher in charge of R&D was Shuya’s senior, Luo Yulin.

The three pharmaceutical R&D offices each had a different research focus.

The First Pharmaceutical R&D Office: Medicinal microorganisms.

The Second Pharmaceutical R&D Office: Gene-targeted drugs.

The Third Pharmaceutical R&D Office: Chemical pharmaceutics.

At a glance, the focuses of the Second and Third Pharmaceutical R&D Offices seemed to overlap.

In reality, their approaches were completely different.

To use an analogy for the Second Pharmaceutical R&D Office’s work on gene-targeted drugs, it was like first setting up a target and then searching for the right arrows from a large pile.

The Third Pharmaceutical R&D Office’s chemical drug development, on the other hand, was like first creating new arrows and then seeing if they could hit the target—or even pierce it.

The lupus treatment Jiang Miao had formulated for He Youwei and her younger brother achieved its therapeutic effect by recombining and adjusting the proportions of existing drugs and molecular substances.

Fundamentally, this wasn’t drug development; it was the refined application of a medical method.

The reason He Youwei’s research for a lupus treatment was fraught with difficulty was precisely because she hadn’t realized this.

To ensure high efficacy and low side effects, gene-targeted therapies must be customized to an individual’s genetic profile. This means each person requires a unique formula; there’s no such thing as a mass-producible, broad-spectrum cure.

He Youwei hadn’t realized this, which was why she was just going down a rabbit hole.

If one truly wanted to make an effective lupus treatment widely available, the focus shouldn’t be on researching a one-size-fits-all drug. It should be on finding a low-cost way to identify each patient’s genetic targets and then customizing a treatment for each of them.

Was such a technology even possible?

In fact, it already was.

Jiang Miao’s metagenomic analysis system, which he developed back in February, could quickly identify each patient’s genetic targets. All it required was a modified model, adjustments for the relevant genetic patterns, and integration of the human genome database.

Of course, this only worked for lupus patients. Researching other human genetic diseases would require recalibrating the analysis model.

Using this technology, all of a patient’s lupus-related genetic targets could be identified within hours. A corresponding effective drug could then be formulated based on these targets, giving the patient access to a relatively affordable medication.

"Relatively affordable" in this context meant a one-time analysis fee of several tens of thousands of yuan, followed by periodic purchases of the custom-formulated medication.

In reality, this wasn’t the pharmaceutical company model, nor was it the Modern Era hospital model. It was the traditional physician model.

Diagnosing a patient, writing a prescription based on their condition, and then compounding the medicine for them—isn’t this exactly the traditional physician’s model?

Because this model involved proprietary technology, it could never be operated by a regular hospital. Furthermore, there was the issue of drug approval risks.

After all, under this model, every patient would receive a "new drug." How would such a drug be handled? If it went through the current new drug approval process, the patient would probably die before they could obtain the legally compliant medication.

But failing to go through the new drug approval process would be considered the crime of producing counterfeit drugs.

Unless a new law was passed specifically stipulating that new drugs produced this way could receive expedited approval.

The problem was, pushing for a new law wasn’t so easy.